When will it be safe to travel, again?
This is the second of three blogs about travel in the era of the coronavirus pandemic. Yesterday’s explained why so much money is tied up, now, in scuttled travel and tomorrow’s will carry my recommendations about what you should do.
South African police and military are enforcing one of the strongest shelter-in-place orders in the world. Airports, rail, buses and all borders are closed. The country just exceeded a thousand cases and two deaths.
Two thousand miles north, Kenya has 31 cases and one death. All international flights are banned and police are rigorously enforcing physical distancing and a dusk to dawn curfew. Are these locally draconian policies proportionate to the threat?
Travelers generally come from privileged classes so it pains me to talk about the unexpected suffering attending travelers, today. But that’s my job. It’s where my life’s been anchored.
Airlines and travel insurance companies are screwing travelers royally. In fact, they’re abusing them. Most larger non-American airlines unbound here by the stricter regulations constraining them on their home turf are exploiting the disastrous incompetence of our government to wave American passengers off with the finger. It’s turned our industry into a pack of thugs.
“This sounds like something we’d be talking about in an underdeveloped country,” the Mayor of New York said today.
If I attributed that remark, as any good journalist would, even some of the fairest liberals would hesitate and wonder if it were “political” or “biased.” And we’d never get to the point of whether it was true.
Withdraw into our shelter-in-place and our vision contracts. Personally I find it harder and harder to concentrate on Africa. My children are much closer.
This week’s winner for best current phrase is, “Let’s keep politics out of this.” Don’t conflate “politics” with “truth,” “trust,” or “experience.” Don’t allow phrases to replace thought. We’re near the point of a federal collapse, a mushroom cloud of dollars blown off the tips of skyscrapers onto state and local authorities that are running helter-skelter below swinging nets trying to catch some.
America, wake up.
“There is no shortage of lab tests [for coronavirus] in Africa,” Rosanna Peeling, chair of diagnostics research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told South Africa’s Fin24 a few hours ago. Stated, yet still hard to believe.
But because of this perception together with the widely exposed negligence of America managing the virus, Americans have been banned from South Africa and Kenya as of last night.
Oh my. A careful reading of the Presidential Proclamation limiting travel starting midnight Friday, and Homeland Security’s accompanying brief shows how woefully inadequate and perhaps intentionally baneful the action is.
The limitation does not apply to Americans, green-card holders and a host of others including most NGOs, cargo and health workers, nor of course the crews and staff of airlines or other transport companies. These exemptions put in certain doubt the effectiveness of the ban.
I’m not a scientist or a medical doctor. I’m a safari guide entrusted not just with the safety and enjoyment of my clients, but with the integrity of their prepaid travel. What do I do?
This isn’t hypothetical. I have a safari scheduled for next week to Tanzania. Because the African vendors there will share the financial miseries, I’ve postponed the trip. Why?
Coronavirus is creeping into Africa but at a much slower rate than some expect given the high levels of transport exchange between Africa, China and even Italy.
South Africa reported a seventh case, prompting a school closure in a suburb of Johannesburg.
Twenty-two passengers who arrived Uganda yesterday from China, Korea and Italy were given the option of two weeks self-funded self-quarantine or to turn around and go back. They all went back.
With South Africa’s first confirmed case of Covid19, some experts say that the virus is unlikely to spread much in Africa.
Here’s why.
Travelers are canceling everything.
If you’re an American scheduled to travel soon, here’s what EWT, other travel brokers and local African vendors, are considering in response to the coronavirus.
The news about coronavirus is overwhelming, dominating all the major media and social media in sub-Saharan Africa. Several important points, especially for travelers planning to visit Africa, soon.
Africa so far presents a “puzzle” to health officials wondering why there isn’t a greater outbreak there, because travel exchange in Africa with China is among the highest in the world, and as a continent Africa has the least developed public health systems in the world. (Notable exception is the country of South Africa.)
Everyone is focused on the Covid19 pandemic, but what about the unprecedented continuing outbreak of Ebola in central Africa and Lassa in Nigeria, and why all this now?
The ebola outbreak began in August, 2018, and of 3,340 confirmed cases 2,249 have died, a two-thirds mortality rate. And it continues. In Nigeria the chronic Lassa virus has mushroomed with over 600 cases and 170 deaths annually since 2018.
What’s going on?
No coronavirus cases have been confirmed in sub-Saharan Africa, but they’re expected. The two main airlines from Africa to China, Ethiopian and Kenya Airways, have suspended many of their flights and Ethiopian is quarantining all incoming passengers from China.
What does this mean for upcoming safari travel?
Years ago when I first guided safaris one of the concerns potential travelers had – before and after their trip! – were the … bathrooms.
Even today we joke that the veld has a bathroom anywhere you might need it! But in the old days the concern wasn’t so much with the veld as with the hotel or lodge.